Scriptural Allusions in My Fiction - P. Julian
How a lifetime of exposure to scripture shapes my fiction. Four passages from My Name is Sheol, The Chronicles of Lupa and The Majesty of Judas, with analyses of their biblical references.
The Resonances of Scripture
The resonances of scripture run deep within my work, alongside debts to more modern writers of prose and poetry. It is important to understand, though, that my scriptural allusions generally do not arise from deliberate choices made as I write.
I was born into a devout Catholic family and, through attending Mass, have been steeped in the words of scripture from my earliest days. One part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word, takes the faithful through recurring cycles of biblical readings. It includes a psalm, readings from the Old Testament and other parts of the New Testament, and, in pride of place, a reading from the Gospels.
Not every child exposed to this material absorbs it as I did. For some reason I was particularly susceptible to it, much more so than my siblings, for example. The words and themes of scripture have become part of me almost as though they were elements of my flesh and blood. I can scarcely distinguish the part of me shaped by them from any other part.
This is the fundamental reason there are so many scriptural references in my work. I could deliberately insert quotations or doctrinal claims, but my familiarity with this language also allows me to combine it and riff on it almost endlessly.
To explain this, I sometimes turn to the example of a jazz musician. Improvisation produces something new, but it draws on a vast store of music the player has heard, learned and made their own. Familiar phrases can then be combined and transformed in the moment of playing.
Rather than say more about it, let me demonstrate. Below are four passages from my work in which scriptural references and themes are unusually dense. They come together to create particular emotional and spiritual movements within each passage.
Each is followed by a retrospective attempt to identify its scriptural and literary references. Some identifications are necessarily speculative, and the analyses are no doubt incomplete. They nevertheless give a sense of how this material rises into my writing and what I can do with it.
This is not generally a conscious technique, although I am often aware that I am drawing from a deep pool of scriptural language. That distinction matters to me. If I try to place each reference too deliberately, the writing can become clunky. My willingness to question and rearrange the material also gives me a freedom that a firm commitment to its received doctrines might constrain.
If you have questions about the method, please feel free to get in touch. I would also love to hear from others who write in this way. There is rich potential in taking a lifetime’s exposure to ancient texts and transmuting it into something new—something “rich and strange”.
The passages and analyses are set out below.
1 Luc’s redemption in My Name is Sheol
My Name is Sheol 1:165-166
Passage
165. Before Luc’s redemption can proceed there are formal words which must be said to him, words of hope and validation that can surge between certain realms, like deep calling to another deep. These words come through me in my ordinary voice, saying softly to Luc that his transgression is forgiven, that his sin is remitted, that his iniquity is pardoned, that She has uplifted all burdens from his soul. I see his body quake as I tell him these things, as I continue to inform him that his prayers have been heard, that his petition has been answered, that simply to call on Her in his extremity was to have his petition upheld. I see tears begin to fall from his eyes as these words continue to stream out of me, and as I witness his relief I am moved towards tears as well.
She is your hiding place, Luc.
She will preserve you from trouble.
She will encompass you about with songs of deliverance.
She will strengthen you under the shadow of Her wings.
She will instruct you from a high place.
She will teach you in the ways in which you shall go.
166. These words flow out of me for a long time as Luc weeps softly and bows his head. They speak of many things both just and merciful and every word that falls from me falls to retrieve his soul. Because upon every word is stamped the truth: you are Hers now, Luc. She has carved you on the palm of Her hand and in the shape of your heart is Her heart. She will never forget you, She will not leave you orphaned, She will guide you and protect you and in places beyond hope you will make your stand for Her. You will fight for Her, Luc, you will repay Her faith in you. You are entered into covenant with Her everlasting if you will only take your stand for the covenant. If you will glorify Her name and the marvellous things that She has done: so that whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose upon the earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.
Analysis
The opening words of pardon—“his transgression is forgiven, that his sin is remitted, that his iniquity is pardoned”—draw especially on Psalm 32:1–2. “She is your hiding place” and “songs of deliverance” return to Psalm 32:7; the promises to instruct and teach Luc recall Psalm 32:8. Rather than quoting the psalm continuously, the passage lets its language of pardon, refuge and instruction reappear as Luc’s redemption unfolds.
Other Psalms enter the same current. “Deep calling to another deep” adapts Psalm 42:7. “Under the shadow of Her wings” draws on a recurring image of shelter in Psalms 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4, 63:7 and 91:4. Prayers heard and petitions answered belong to the Psalms’ familiar pattern of distress, prayer and deliverance, though no one verse is clearly the exclusive source. Psalms 18:6, 34:4 and 17, 50:15 and 120:1 are possible points of contact.
The passage then draws strongly on Isaiah. “You are Hers now, Luc” recalls “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). “She has carved you on the palm of Her hand” and “She will never forget you” belong together as an adaptation of Isaiah 49:15–16: God says that Zion is engraved on his palms and cannot be forgotten. In this scene that promise is spoken directly to Luc.
“In the shape of your heart is Her heart” has no equally clear single source, but resonates with the covenant written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34), the new heart and spirit (Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26–27), and perhaps the person after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). The formulation takes these images further: Luc’s heart comes to resemble Hers. “She will not leave you orphaned” closely echoes John 14:18. “Everlasting covenant” is widespread biblical language, including Isaiah 55:3 and 61:8, Jeremiah 32:40, Ezekiel 37:26 and Hebrews 13:20.
“Every word that falls from me falls to retrieve his soul” may recall the restoration of the soul by divine instruction (Psalm 19:7) and the effective word that descends like rain (Isaiah 55:10–11). Making his stand and fighting for Her may faintly echo Ephesians 6:13–14 and 1 Timothy 6:12. These are possibilities, not secure quotations. Glorifying Her name and recounting the marvellous things She has done sounds in the language of Psalms 86:12, 98:1, 105:2 and 126:2–3; there may also be a Marian overtone from the Magnificat (Luke 1:49).
The final words unmistakably adapt Matthew 16:19 and 18:18: what is bound or loosed on earth is bound or loosed in heaven. The authority given in Matthew to Peter and, in a related formulation, the disciples or community is promised here to Luc. His redemption ends in spiritual agency. “Repay Her faith in you” makes another striking reversal: She has faith in Luc first, and his fidelity will answer it.
The scene also resembles absolution: its spoken words do more than describe forgiveness; within the story they help bring it about. I see no certain reference to a particular non-biblical myth, though the movement from spiritual captivity through soul retrieval to changed identity has a broader mythic shape. Psalmic pardon and shelter lead into Isaiah’s redemption and remembrance, inward transformation, covenant and the authority to bind and loose.
2 Ruby and the Song of Songs in The Chronicles of Lupa
From the Chronicles of Lupa 1:1
Passage
Ruby went to school and she behaved herself but she did not understand why she had to read such stupid books as they gave her. The Bible made no sense, derived as it was from the need to protect the truth, but her mother would say: in this Book is the sanctuary of Lupa. You must be thankful for the deceptions in this Book, but you must not believe in them.
Her Mother also said that there were parts of the Book that were true parts and were woven from their song, even in the same breath as they had first been intoned and taken down.
When Ruby heard those parts sung out to her as they were so often let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth she was silenced and she listened intently for the whole cycle to be recited:
… My beloved thrust his hand through the latch opening
My heart began to pound for him
I arose to open for my beloved
And my hands dripped with myrrh
My fingers with flowing myrrh
On the handles of the bolt…
And at Ruby’s stillness, not even taking a breath so as to hear better, her mother would laugh softly and say: Ruby Child there are more important parts to this song. But although this may have been true for her mother, and although Ruby did her best to listen to every other part of their song, there seemed to her to be no greater part than this.
And even as Ruby dreamed her heart stayed awake, listening for these stanzas of her song, this song above all other songs, setting out in true lines the desire that would suddenly come upon her for her beloved when he should reveal himself, coming out of the wilderness like a column of smoke, sweetened with incense and blowing only for her and the desire that was within her, sweeping towards her on the south wind that is warmed by the desert places. The south wind that would whisper to her, saying he is coming, coming for her alone to receive up with her body, and into the chambers of her heart.
Analysis
Ruby hears the opening desire of the Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (Song 1:2). The subsequent lines about the beloved’s hand at the door, her pounding heart and her myrrh-covered fingers are quoted from Song 5:4–5. These are direct quotations within the story; Ruby’s response begins the story’s own adaptation of the poem.
“Even as Ruby dreamed her heart stayed awake” returns to the line immediately preceding the longer quotation: “I slept but my heart was awake” (Song 5:2). The biblical speaker’s state has become Ruby’s. The imagined arrival of the beloved draws on Song 3:6: a figure coming from the wilderness like a column of smoke, fragrant with incense. An image often read as describing a woman or bridal procession becomes Ruby’s imagined male beloved. Song 8:5 offers a possible further echo in its question about someone coming up from the wilderness leaning on a beloved.
The south wind comes from Song 4:16, where the speaker calls upon the winds to release the fragrance of her garden and invites the beloved to enter. Ruby’s wind has crossed the desert, brings news of his arrival and blows for the desire within her. The “chambers of her heart” may loosely recall the wish to be brought into the king’s chambers in Song 1:4; here that chamber becomes inward as well as physical.
Ruby’s mother says there are more important parts of the song. Ruby tries to listen to them, but this anticipation of encounter has already seized her imagination. The opening kiss (1:2), chambers (1:4), wilderness and incense (3:6), south wind (4:16), and sleeping woman with a waking heart (5:2–5) are gathered into one act of listening. Ruby receives an inherited song and begins to hear it as a song about her own life. The secure direct quotations should be distinguished from the later adaptations and the more tentative echo of the chambers.
3 Jesus speaks of Love in The Majesty of Judas
The Majesty of Judas 48-51
Passage
48. Love was there in the beginning, he says, when the world came to be. And the human heart was originally composed out of Love, which is why this profane world wounds us so badly. This world which fell completely out of Love and can only be our temporary home. We seek Love out, and after our brief sorrowful journey it is to Love that we will return, to our birthright and our True Religion and what we were always meant to be. He assures us that soon enough Love will open Her books of account, and that the loveless who betrayed their true nature will be exiled from Her Communion. Our lives are a short road, he says, ending at a narrow gate, we are here only to be proved of our Love and our claim to return to that Pure Land out of which we are fallen souls.
49. He perfects the words that he is given to say. Love is patient, Love is kind, Love is humble and gentle and slow to rancour. Love delights in the truth and dishonours falsehood. Love restores the barren places with pools and streams of water, it could turn the Negev into watersprings and the deserts into bloom. Love is steadfast and constant and always walks beside us, we cannot be lost to Love because it is not different from what we are and what we were made to be. Many waters cannot drown Love nor can quick rivers quench it. Love is the foundation of our being and our place within the world. Unless Love underpins the home they build, they labour in vain who build it.
50. But to the wicked Love is fierce and says: what right had you to declare my statutes, or take my name upon your lips? These are the hypocrites and the Thieves of Love who give their mouths to gossip, who lie and slander and let their tongues frame deceit. You will know them if you are watchful, he says, you will hear the emptiness of their words and their deeds will ring like hollow bells. Those who barter with thieves, who collude with those betraying their wedding vows, who heap up gold and silver thinking that riches will admit them into the Kingdom. Who are cruel and who exult in their cruelty, who molest the weak and the vulnerable. Love will cast them out into the darkness, where they will continue to clutch and grasp, too full of greed to ever see: that if anyone tried to buy Love with all of the wealth of his house, contempt is all he would get.
51. His Words of Love are bolstered by the many parables he tells. They speak about the least deserving of people, thieves and wastrels and others of that kind. These wretches lurch and founder until they admit the error of their ways, and they are always forgiven and restored by the hand of a righteous father, who rejoices to take his wayward children back into his home and their inheritance. And how much more joyfully will you be received, he says. You who are blameless, you who have been brutalised, you who have never known the tenderness of a loving parent. The Father sees how you have been beaten, how you have been degraded, how you have been violated and cast down and left to eat husks that even swine would baulk at eating.
Analysis
“Love was there in the beginning” recalls Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. John places the Word at the beginning; here Jesus places Love there. The claim that humanity comes from and returns to Love is related to the declaration “God is love” in 1 John 4:7–8 and 16, though the larger vision of origin, exile and return is the speech’s own. The opened books evoke judgment scenes in Daniel 7:10 and Revelation 20:12; the narrow gate recalls Matthew 7:13–14; exclusion and darkness evoke Gospel language of judgment.
“Love is patient, Love is kind,” followed by humility, restraint and delight in truth, unmistakably adapts 1 Corinthians 13:4–6. Paul’s description of love is put in Jesus’ mouth. The restoration of barren places gathers Psalm 107:35 (desert made pools), Isaiah 41:18 (rivers on barren heights), Isaiah 35:1–2 (desert blossoming) and especially Psalm 126:4 (streams in the Negev). What those passages attribute to divine restoration is here performed by Love.
“Many waters cannot drown Love nor can quick rivers quench it” adapts Song of Songs 8:7. “Unless Love underpins the home they build, they labour in vain who build it” adapts Psalm 127:1, replacing the Lord who builds the house with Love. These substitutions make Love the acting subject of several inherited images.
The fierce challenge to the wicked closely follows Psalm 50:16–20: what right have hypocrites to declare divine statutes while consorting with thieves and adulterers and letting their tongues frame deceit? “Thieves of Love” names the hypocrisy of claiming Love while betraying it. “You will know them” may echo Jesus’ teaching that people are known by their fruits (Matthew 7:15–20); “hollow bells” may faintly recall Paul’s clanging cymbal in 1 Corinthians 13:1. The warnings about wealth belong more broadly to Gospel criticism of riches.
The paragraph then returns to the second half of Song 8:7: all the wealth of a house cannot buy love. Dividing that verse across two paragraphs lets it do two jobs: Love cannot be drowned and Love cannot be purchased.
The final paragraph draws chiefly on the lost son in Luke 15:11–32: squandered inheritance, misery among the pigs and the father’s joyful welcome. The husks sharpen the detail of the son longing for the pigs’ food. Jesus then extends the welcome beyond the repentant wastrel to the blameless who have been brutalised or deprived of parental tenderness. The father’s mercy becomes a promise to the wounded as well as to those who have done wrong.
Across these paragraphs Love is present at creation, judges hypocrisy, restores the desert, withstands water, builds the house and receives lost children. The speech assembles voices from many biblical books and lets Jesus direct them toward one central claim about Love.
4 Lilith’s epistle in The Chronicles of Lupa
From the Chronicles of Lupa 2 (Epistle)
Passage
17 For what insanity is it, to mortify the flesh? This madness wrought by all of the Old Religions. To accuse this sweet, tender skin and blood? To deny the sheer agility and delight, the fabulously improbable nature of it? To slander every sweetness it has to offer?
18 Friends do not think I was innocent of this slander. All of the posturing I had done, yoking myself to an insane God, the greed that made me contort my body into shapes it was never meant to assume. I broke open my energy centres, hungry to feed on them, I lusted after power and I was infested all the more.
19 In all of these sins: I was the greatest among you. I venerated the Void and I proclaimed silence to be golden, I denigrated the Word and gave over my tender flesh to every djinn that creeps and possesses and deceives.
20 We were told that we were wretches and worms, all such degenerate accusations. We were led around by chimeras and pillars of fire, by djinns masquerading as Prophets and as the Risen Christ. We esteemed the madness of the Revelator, the pitiful insanity of Saul.
21 How easily we were deceived! To believe that a single trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, or that one act of brutality resulted in justification and life for everyone!
22 So too were we exhorted to wait, but for what? A false hope and a broken promise, a man who died and never rose, and out of that every horror that has since enslaved the world.
23 Even the falsehoods spoken about The One. I saw plainly that two are better than one, for when one falls the other may uplift her companion. Though one might be overpowered, two can withstand the oppressor. And with such power in two, then what of three? Or more than that? They shall twine into a cord that shall not easily be broken.
Analysis
“Mortify the flesh” recalls the language of putting bodily or sinful deeds to death, especially Romans 8:13 and Colossians 3:5. Biblical attitudes to the body are varied—Paul also calls it a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)—but Lilith rejects the habit of treating living flesh as suspect. Her “sweet, tender skin and blood” becomes something to defend.
She admits that she herself took part in that slander, “yoking” herself to an insane God and contorting her body in pursuit of power. The “energy centres” belong to her experience of yoga and related spiritual practice, not to the Bible. Her criticism describes her own greed for spiritual power and mistreatment of her body, rather than all yoga. Classical Yoga Sūtra 2.46, for instance, describes posture in terms of steadiness and ease.
“The greatest among you” may faintly echo Paul’s description of himself as foremost among sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). “The Word” evokes John 1:1 more strongly. “Wretches and worms” evokes religious abasement, with possible points of contact in Psalm 22:6 and Romans 7:24; Lilith refuses to let such expressions define human worth. “Pillars of fire” recall the divine guidance of Exodus 13:21–22, but her context recasts apparent guidance as possible deception. Djinns bring another religious vocabulary into the same challenge.
“Prophets and the Risen Christ” contest revelatory and resurrection claims. “The Revelator” may suggest John of Patmos, though it is not a certain identification. “Saul” may call up Paul’s earlier name; the next sentence makes Paul a particularly strong presence, though the name alone need not settle all its implications.
The most precise reversal is Romans 5:18. Lilith retains Paul’s pairing of one trespass bringing condemnation to all and one act bringing justification and life to all. She changes his “righteous act” into “one act of brutality,” rejecting both inherited condemnation and the claim that another person’s violent death resolves it. She then rejects the promise of the risen and returning Christ in her own uncompromising terms.
The last paragraph closely adapts Ecclesiastes 4:9–12. Two are better than one; a fallen person can be raised by a companion; two can withstand an attacker; and a threefold cord is not readily broken. Lilith then extends its logic: if two and three are strong, why not more? The epistle ends with solidarity rather than a solitary saving figure. Its signature, “your faithful companion, and your every friend: Lililith,” acts out the companionship it commends.
The passage contests scripture by speaking in its language. Romans is quoted closely enough to reveal exactly what Lilith overturns; Ecclesiastes is quoted closely because she finds there something she can affirm and enlarge. Her movement from the deeds of singular figures to the mutual strength of many companions is the passage’s governing reversal.